"This falles out better, then I could deuise":
Play-Bound Playwrights
and the Nature of Shakespearean Comedy
Kenneth B. Steele
University of Toronto
1990
William Shakespeare's comedies and romances are
populated with a great many characters who function as internal
representatives of the playwright's trade. In every comedy but
his first, the cast includes at least one figure who either frames
the entire play as an explicit artefact, directs and produces a
contained performance, stages a theatrical practical joke, or
orchestrates the events of the entire playworld toward a comic
dnouement. The early comedies display the evolution of the
frame playwright and the internal performance, but it is with _A
Midsummer Night's Dream that Shakespeare creates his first
genuinely surrogate dramaturge, Oberon. The later comedies
tend to exploit the uncomfortable scapegoat humour of the
practical joke, develop the interaction of multiple and
competitive dramatists, and finally produce the immensely
problematic Duke Vincentio. Shakespeare's final romances
return to the enchanted realm of Oberon, where omnipotent
dramaturges are once again capable of achieving truly comic
resolutions. Something in the nature of comedy urged
Shakespeare to create these play-bound playwrights, either to
demonstrate the crucial role of the theatre in realizing social
harmony, or to interpose a substitute between himself and the
often absurd or arbitrary materials of the comic tradition.[1]
Shakespeare's dramatic surrogates share an intriguing array of
characteristics and methods, and quite possibly present an
epitome of Shakespeare's own approach to comic drama.
Shakespeare's first comic effort, _The Comedy of Errors
(1592-4),[2] is in many ways presented as simply and
straightforwardly as its title. The play is thoroughly classical in
structure, exuberantly artificial in plot, and blatantly
contemptuous of verisimilitude.[3] The traditional plot device of
the shipwreck makes the first of many appearances in
Shakespearean comedy: it is also prominent in _Twelfth Night,
_The Winter's Tale and _The Tempest.[4] Two sets of identical
twins, dressed identically, further strains credibility, yet
Shakespeare does not attempt to explain away the difficulty, as
he will later do in _Twelfth Night (_12N 3.4.379-83). An
arbitrary death sentence on all Syracusan tourists without a
thousand marks in spending money makes use of yet another
standard dramatic device, which for convenience can be labelled
the death-on-sight scenario. This will resurface throughout the
comedies as an excuse grasped in desperation by Shakespeare's
deputy playwrights. _The Comedy of Errors is unique among
the comedies for its total lack of an internal dramatist, and
indeed for the manner in which it virtually ignores its identity
as drama.[5] When Antipholus appeals to "Some blessed power"
to deliver him from the "illusions" of Ephesus (_CE F1 4.3.42,41),
his prayer is answered, not by some classical equivalent of
divine providence, nor by a surrogate dramatist, but by
Shakespeare himself, who never slackens his hold on the puppet-
strings in this play. The exuberance and simplicity of the
presentation of _The Comedy of Errors marks it as an initial
experiment in the comic genre.
Shakespeare's second comedy, _The Taming of the Shrew
(1593-4), is partially or entirely framed by an Induction, in which
an unnamed Lord arranges for the play proper to be performed
as part of his "practise on this drunken man" (_TS F1
Ind.1.36).[6] This seems, in retrospect of course, a natural
progression from the more direct presentation of _The Comedy
of Errors. A frame playwright figure absorbs responsibility for
the comic material, which is arbitrary, absurd, and chauvinistic,
more completely than any other form of fictional dramatist.
The inflexibility and limited metatheatrical implications of the
technique, however, evidently left Shakespeare unsatisfied, for
he abandons the framework even before this play's completion,
and the frame playwright disappears from his comedies until
very late in his career, with Gower in _Pericles and Time in
_The Winter's Tale.
The metatheatrical technique which seems to dominate the
comedies of the middle 1590's is the internal performance,
usually produced by a playwright-director of patently limited
abilities. This seems a reasonable development from the
technique of _The Taming of the Shrew, in which a fictional
playwright presents the entire play, in the process heightening
its artificiality and aesthetically distancing the audience. By
inverting the approach, Shakespeare contains the playwright
figure and his production within the play as a whole, achieving
greater verisimilitude and a diminished distinction between the
real world of the audience and the fictional world of the play.
Shakespeare's first attempt at contained plays, in _Love's
Labour's Lost (1594-5), seems a trifle overstated: the King of
Navarre and his lords perform the masque of the "Muscouites"
(_LLL Q1 5.2.124) complete with nervous prologue, then the
Queen and her ladies defeat it with what has been called an
"antimasque,"[7] Holofernes orchestrates the "pageant, or
antique, or fierworke" of the Nine Worthies "in the posterior of
this day" (_LLL Q1 5.1.92,98), and finally also the "Dialogue . . .
in prayse of the Owle and the Cuckow" which completes the
play (_LLL Q1 5.2.912-914). As Sidney Homan observes,
Holofernes' preparations, like Quince's, are primarily concerned
with possible disasters (Homan 73), but here it is the openly
hostile audience, rather than any professional deficiency, which
destroys the illusion of the pageant.
Shakespeare's next assay at a comedy with internal
performance comes soon after with _A Midsummer Night's
Dream (1595-6), and demonstrates a number of technical
refinements. Shakespeare does not overload the play with
internal performances, but rather concentrates on Quince's
production of the "tedious briefe Scene of young _Pyramus /
And his loue _Thisby" (_MSND Q1 5.1:54-55), allowing it to
underlie the structure of the entire play. The interruptions of
the Athenian audience are appreciative and encouraging,
resulting in a much subtler effect than the open antagonism of
the audience in _Love's Labour's Lost. Shakespeare's use of the
theatrical framing technique reaches its climax in the final
scene, in which the mechanicals perform before an audience
which is itself a pageant for enchanted beings who are
themselves part of a performance.
Although the internal play resurfaces in _Hamlet (1600-1),
Shakespeare seems to abandon it in comic circumstances with
_A Midsummer Night's Dream. Rather than explicit
performances, Shakespeare relies on theatrical metaphors and
images for similar metatheatrical effects in his later plays. One
sort of formal performance which remains current throughout the
comic canon, however, is the masque. First introduced in
_Love's Labour's Lost, masques resurface in _The Merchant of
Venice (1596-7), _As You Like It (1599), and _The Tempest
(1611), where they are presented by Lorenzo, Rosalind, and
Prospero.[8] The internal masque, less constrained by plot and
theme than the internal play, was evidently a simpler and more
flexible enhancement to scenes of pageantry, producing effects
much like musical accompaniment in scenes of marriage or
festivity.
Ultimately, the significance of these contained playwrights
and their internal performances diminishes in comparison with
the surrogate playwrights, who direct characters and orchestrate
events within the expansive reality of Shakespeare's own
dramatic cosmos. These characters appear in all but one of the
comedies, and in many of the histories and tragedies.[9] Some,
like Oberon, Vincentio, or Prospero, seem to function quite
literally as surrogates for Shakespeare himself, apparently
maintaining omnipotent control of events throughout their plays.
Other playwright figures, often females in male disguise, guide
the course of the play without any outward show of formal
authority. In a number of plays, most notably _The Merry Wives
of Windsor (1597), multiple playwrights interact in collaboration
and competition. Secondary playwrights are responsible for dark
practical jokes (primarily in the problem comedies), abortive
conspiracies, and misguided designs which are contrary to
Shakespeare's overall comic design. The more developed
surrogate dramaturges, who are given responsibility for the
direction of Shakespeare's own plays, more authoritatively
reflect his approach to dramatic art than the producers of
atrocious internal performances, which are contained and limited
by a larger theatrical context.
_The Comedy of Errors, unlike all of Shakespeare's other
comedies, has no internal director. Duke Solinus appears to
have authority in the opening scene as he pronounces sentence
on Egeon, but he remains offstage and out of mind for most of
the play. He returns at the zenith of confusion, but is no less
perplexed than his subjects. Solinus is no Vincentio: he, like
Duke Theseus in _A Midsummer Night's Dream, serves initially
only to enforce the death threat, and finally only to dismiss it.
Yet in _The Comedy of Errors, arbitrary and absurd feats of
stagecraft are accomplished and moreover emphasized through
the dialogue. The newcomers to Ephesus repeatedly equate
events there with "sorcery,"[10] and the work of professional
entertainers, "nimble Iuglers that deceiue the eie" (_CE F1
1.2.98). Adriana observes that her husband is "borne about
inuisible" (_CE F1 5.1.190), not by the magic of Prospero or
Ariel, but by Shakespeare's dramatic artistry. In what may well
be his first comedy, Shakespeare follows classical precedent by
relying unabashedly upon authorial manipulation of coincidence
and accident[11] to achieve comic confusion and its final
resolution.
In the surviving text of _The Taming of the Shrew, the
Lord of the Induction diminishes in importance, eventually to be
entirely forgotten, while the characters of the play proper take
on independent dramaturgic power. First, Lucentio and Tranio
are confronted with "some shew to welcome vs to Towne" (_TS
F1 1.1.47), a conventional marriage intrigue being orchestrated
by Baptista Minola. Later, Baptista finds his dramaturgy
defeated by Petruchio's own, as the groom appears "An eye-sore
to our solemne festiuall" (_TS F1 3.2.93). Lucentio and Tranio
next don disguises to play roles of their own devising, later
recruiting "An ancient Angel" to portray Vincentio (_TS F1
4.2.65).[12] In both cases they resort to the death-on-sight
clich of _The Comedy of Errors to avert suspicion:
_Luc. . . . Your fellow _Tranio heere to saue my life,
Puts my apparrell, and my count'nance on,
And I for my escape haue put on his:
For in a quarrell since I came a-shore,
I kil'd a man, and feare I was descried:
Waite you on him, I charge you, as becomes:
While I make way from hence to saue my life[.]
. . .
_Tra. 'Tis death for any one in Mantua
To come to Padua, know you not the cause?
Your ships are staid at Venice, and the Duke
For priuate quarrel 'twixt your Duke and him,
Hath publish'd and proclaim'd it openly:
'Tis meruaile, but that you are but newly come,
You might haue heard it else proclaim'd about.
(_TS F1 1.1.231, 4.2.88-94)
Petruchio is the primary surrogate playwright in the play,
however, manipulating characters and shaping events toward his
own vision of a comic conclusion. Kate explicitly remarks,
"Belike you meane to make a puppet of me" (_TS F1 4.3.106),
and Petruchio celebrates his success in terms suggestive of
Duke Vincentio's almost Machiavellian dramaturgy: "Thus haue I
politickely begun my reigne, / And 'tis my hope to end
successefully" (_TS F1 4.1.175-6). Petruchio, like Iago, has
mastered Shakespeare's use of the implicit stage direction,[13]
and uses the power of his language to alter reality:
Say that she raile, why then Ile tell her plaine,
She sings as sweetly as a Nightinghale:
Say that she frowne, Ile say she lookes as cleere
As morning Roses newly washt with dew:
Say she be mute, and will not speake a word,
Then Ile commend her volubility . . .
(_TS F1 2.1.176-81)
Prospero's magic is also primarily linguistic, a fact emphasized
when he asks Ariel if he has "Performd *to point*, the Tempest
that I bad thee," and receives the reply, "To euery *Article*"
(_Temp F1 1.2.225-6, emphasis mine). Slightly later, Ariel
promises to follow Prospero's instructions "To th' syllable"
(_Temp F1 1.2.587). Petruchio's linguistic power also achieves
miraculous proportions: he insists "It shall be what a clock I say
it is" (_TS F1 4.3.188), "It shall be moone, or starre, or what I
list" (_TS F1 4.5.9), and he transforms Vincentio, temporarily,
into a "Faire louely Maide" (_TS F1 4.5.36).
Like many later Shakespearean surrogate playwrights,
Petruchio repeatedly promises explanations with no intention of
actually providing them:
Sufficeth I am come to keepe my word,
Though in some part inforced to digresse,
Which at more leysure I will so excuse,
As you shall well be satisfied with all.
. . .
Gentlemen & friends, I thank you for your pains,
I know you thinke to dine with me to day,
And haue prepar'd great store of wedding cheere,
But so it is, my haste doth call me hence,
And therefore heere I meane to take my leaue.
. . .
I must away to day before night come,
Make it no wonder: if you knew my businesse,
You would intreat me rather goe then stay[.]
(_TS F1 3.2.98-101, 173-7, 179-81)
Likewise Lucentio assures Tranio, "if thou ask me why, /
Sufficeth my reasons are both good and waighty" (_TS F1
1.1.251-2); Vincentio promises "Moe reasons for this action / At
our more leysure" (_MM F1 1.3.51-2); Portia promises to answer
"intergotories" within (_MV Q1 5.1.316); Paulina insists, "There's
time enough for that" (_WT F1 5.3.156); and Prospero repeatedly
makes the point:
No more yet of this,
For 'tis a Chronicle of day by day,
Not a relation for a break- fast, nor
Befitting this first meeting[.]
(_Temp F1 5.1.180)
Petruchio, the shrew-taming husband, seems to be the prototype
for a long line of internal dramaturges in Shakespearean
comedy. His energies are directed towards only a single
character, and his ambitions for communal renewal are limited
primarily to his own marriage, but the later surrogate
playwrights who attempt to orchestrate any number of
headstrong individuals into a larger comic resolution seem to
have taken notes at Petruchio's "taming schoole" (_TS F1 4.2.59).
With _The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594), Shakespeare
creates the first of many female characters in disguise. Julia
transforms herself into a male in order to act in a patriarchal
society, but the movement into and out of disguise also, as
Northrop Frye has observed, "comes as close to a death and
revival as Elizabethan conventions will allow" (Frye, "Argument"
86). Shakespeare does bring his heroines closer to death,
however: Julia and Rosalind swoon while in disguise (_2GV
5.4.84, _AYLI 4.3.157), and of course Hermione seems quite
literally dead for most of _The Winter's Tale.[14] Portia,
Rosalind, Viola, and Imogen perform more distinctly dramaturgic
roles than Julia while in disguise, but variations of Julia's ring
trick bring about the comic resolutions in _The Merchant of
Venice and _Cymbeline (1609-10), and the motif also appears in
the middle of _Twelfth Night (1601-2). The _coup de thtre for
the disguised female playwrights is usually their own discovery
scene, the moment at which Rosalind orchestrates an apparently
supernatural marriage masque. Julia unveils herself, as Paulina
unveils Hermione's statue, and as Prospero reveals the true
Duke of Milan, with the word "Behold" (_2GV F1 5.4.106, _WT F1
5.3.23, _Temp F1 5.1.112), drawing an audience's attention to a
spectacle in distinctly theatrical fashion.
_Love's Labour's Lost contains both a number of internal
performances and Shakespeare's first group of collaborating and
competing dramaturges. The King of Navarre is also the first in
a series of royal playwrights, including Theseus, Oberon, Don
Pedro, Vincentio, and Prospero, who combine political and
dramatic authority to varying degrees. Navarre's project is
announced in the play's opening lines, to stage a "lytlle
Achademe, / Still and contemplatyue in lyuing art" (_LLL Q1
1.1.13-14), and he seeks the assistance of Dumaine, Longaville,
and Berowne to transform his script into reality. This labour is
the first to be lost, of course, in the concentric theatrics of the
sonnet scene (_LLL 4.3), in which Berowne, like Prospero, sits
"Like a demie God . . . in the skie" (_LLL Q1 4.3.74).
Navarre is also one of several secondary dramaturges
whose intentions are good, but whose designs are in direct
opposition to the communal emphasis of comedy. Ultimately his
production is doomed to defeat as surely as the Pageant of the
Nine Worthies, and it faces an even more critical audience: the
ladies of France. Navarre's wish for academic withdrawal is like
Lucentio's plan for "A course of Learning, and ingenious studies"
(_TS F1 1.1.9), and likewise meets with dissent; Berowne, like
Tranio, prefers "arts that bring men and women together, rather
than philosophies which separate and distinguish the fibers of
our existence" (Homan, _When Theatre... 52). Navarre's desire
is the antipathy of comedy, the risk facing Portia's suitors and
essentially the penalty which threatens Hermia's happiness, "to
abiure, / For euer, the society of men" (_MSND Q1 1.1.68-9).
As their plays open, Olivia and Isabella have both "abiur'd the
sight / And company of men" (_12N F1 1.2.40-1), and in the
process of comic resolution, such vows must be dissolved, even
through arbitrary or disturbing means.[15] Duke Vincentio
claims to love "the life remoued" (_MM F1 1.3.9), just as
Prospero declares "my Librarie / Was Dukedome large enough"
(_Temp F1 1.2.126-7); but for Prospero the solipsism has led to
political disaster, and for Vincentio, the "life remoued" is only
possible while he maintains the assumed habit of a friar.[16]
Such academic inclinations seem to be prerequisite for a
number of Shakespeare's surrogate dramatists, but also a stage
of life to be cast aside once the comic resolution is achieved.
The ladies of France impose penances on Navarre and Berowne
which are calculated to extract them from their ivory tower,
much as Portia finally abandons her law-books, Vincentio
proposes marriage (twice), and of course Prospero "drowne[s]
[his] booke" (_Temp F1 5.1.62). Shakespeare tends to view
scholarship as simply the young man's alternative to marriage
(_1H6 5.1.21-3; _2GV 1.1.67); and the occupation of those like
Angelo, "whose blood / Is very snow-broth" (_MM F1 1.4.64).
Textual evidence suggests that the lines in _Pericles which
praise Art's "labourd scholler" are probably not Shakespeare's
(_Per Q1 2.3.14-16): his treatment of pedants elsewhere tends to
support Berowne's contention that "Small haue continuall
plodders euer wonne, / Saue base authoritie from others Bookes"
(_LLL F1 1.1.87-88). Sonnet 66 presents the still more powerful
image of
. . . art made tongue-tied by authority,
And Folly (Doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple Truth miscalled Simplicity[.][17]
In the realm of Shakespearean comedy, scholarship is an
isolated and sterile occupation -- but then there is, after all, no
Shakespearean comedy there to be studied.
In _Love's Labour's Lost, the Lords of Navarre are
obliged to abandon their own project, and in typically human
fashion they attack the Pageant of the Nine Worthies in
retaliation. The Ladies of France undermine the Masque of the
Muscovites and refuse to be absorbed into the comic pattern
devised by the lords of Navarre:
here was a consent,
Knowing aforehand of our meriment,
To dash it lik a Christmas Comedie[.]
. . .
Our wooing doth not ende like an olde Play:
Iacke hath not Gill: these Ladies courtesie
Might well haue made our sport a Comedie.
(_LLL Q1 5.2.488-90,900-2)
After the intrusion of Marcade assures that love's labour is
indeed lost, the ladies present an apology which sounds
distinctly like Puck's "If we shadowes haue offended" (_MSND Q1
5.1.386), an epilogue which makes their behaviour still more
explicitly theatrical:
. . . I thanke you gracious Lords
For all your faire endeuours and intreat:
Out of a new sad-soule, that you vouchsafe,
In your rich wisedome to excuse, or hide,
The liberall opposition of our spirites,
If ouerboldly we haue borne our selues,
In the conuerse of breath (your gentlenes
Was guyltie of it.)
(_LLL Q1 5.2.752-9)
In _A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare turns from
political to magical power as an analogy for dramatic art, and
the result is one of his three most significant playwrights,
Oberon. Initially, Oberon seems to possess omniscience and
omnipotence, and can therefore function, in Shakespeare's
created play-world, as an extension of his creator. Under-
standably, Shakespeare chose an immortal being for his first
authoritative playwright, because his magical authority, like
Prospero's, seems to make a comic resolution possible despite
even insurmountable difficulties. Vincentio, the other major
surrogate dramaturge, has no magical abilities, but only an
assumed religious aura and his creator's blessing -- and this is
perhaps why _Measure for Measure in general and he in
particular are perceived as problematic: a magical spell can
manipulate characters and yet maintain the comic spirit of the
play, but machiavellian intrigues and an enforced marriage
inevitably seem mere dictatorship.
Oberon's omniscience, like that of Vincentio and Prospero,
is illusory, however. The events which befall the Athenian
lovers preposterously are not part of Oberon's plan: he
carelessly tells Puck that he will "know the man, / By the
_Athenian garments he hath on" (_MSND Q1 2.1.262), without
realizing that Lysander and Demetrius are indistinguishable on
the basis of this description. This minor oversight is well within
the limits of immortal possibility, however; Vincentio and
Prospero are guilty of more glaring, mortal errors.
Angelo says that Vincentio, "like powre diuine, / Hath
look'd vpon my passes" (_MM F1 5.1.401-2), but the Duke is far
from omniscient -- in fact, he seems to make more errors than
any other surrogate playwright. Vincentio's first obvious surprise
is Angelo's treachery following the bed-trick. Vincentio assures
the Provost that, "As neere the dawning Prouost, as it is, / You
shall heare more ere Morning" (_MM F1 4.2.95-6). To this, the
Provost replies, apparently with more prescience than the Duke:
"Happely / You something know: yet I beleeue there comes / No
countermand: no such example haue we" (_MM F1 4.2.97-9).
When Angelo's missive arrives, Vincentio verbally pats himself on
the back while the Provost reads the orders:
This is his Pardon purchas'd by such sin,
For which the Pardoner himselfe is in:
Hence hath offence his quicke celeritie,
When it is borne in high Authority.
When Vice makes Mercie; Mercie's so extended,
That for the faults loue, is th' offender friended.
(_MM F1 4.2.111-6)
Of course Vincentio is dead wrong, just as another Friar-habited
playwright, Friar Francis, is mistaken when he predicts Claudio's
repentance:
so will it fare with Claudio:
When hee shall heare she died vpon his words,
Th Idaea of her life shall sweetly creepe,
Into his study of imagination,
And euery louely Organ of her life,
Shall come apparelld in more precious habite,
More moouing delicate, and full of life,
Into the eie and prospect of his soule
Then when she liude indeed: then shall he mourne,
If euer loue had interest in his liuer,
And wish he had not so accused her:
No, though he thought his accusation true[.]
(_MAAN Q1 4.1.227-237)
Vincentio, responding _ad lib to this surprising turn of events,
determines to send Barnardine's head instead of Claudio's, but
again his comic design is undermined (_MM 4.3.53 ff).[18]
Finally, Vincentio seems to marshal superfluous forces to
prepare for some unreal eventuality (perhaps the assassination of
a Caesar): he sends Friar Peter to Flavia, Valencius, Rowland,
and Crassius, before speaking privately to Varrius (_MM 4.5.6-
11).
Prospero, like Oberon, is guilty of a single significant
oversight, perhaps because he is also working with the benefit of
virtually unlimited magical power; his determination to "Bestow
vpon the eyes of this yong couple / Some vanity of mine Art"
(_Temp F1 4.1.43-4) suggests an enchantment very much like
Oberon's. Suddenly, at the height of Prospero's art, and the
climax of the play's rhyme, the chaotic prose world of Caliban
erupts into his chastity masque:
_Enter certaine Reapers (properly habited:) they
ioyne with the Nimphes, in a gracefull dance,
towards the end where-of, Prospero _starts sodainly
and speakes, after which to a strange hollow and
confused noyse, they heauily vanish.
_Pro. I had forgot that foule conspiracy
Of the beast _Calliban, and his confederates
Against my life: the minute of their plot
Is almost come: Well done, auoid: no more.
(_Temp F1 4.1.151sd-155)
The oversights of Oberon, Vincentio, and Prospero seem in
context merely Shakespearean ploys to add comic confusion,
suspense, or activity -- yet when the pattern is recognized
across his major and minor dramaturgic figures, it appears to
have other significance.
Some of Shakespeare's more minor playwrights are
similarly surprised by forgotten matters. An earlier Duke,
Theseus, who is trying to maintain rational control of Athens in
the midst of lunatics, lovers, and fairies, has forgotten to discuss
with Demetrius the matter of his involvement with Helena: "My
minde did loose it," he explains (_MSND Q1 1.1.118) -- but
fortunately Theseus is not the primary dramaturge of the play.
The King of Navarre, too, who has just implemented his script
for his "lytlle Achademe" (_LLL Q1 1.1.12), is immediately
reminded of the imminent approach of the Princess of France,
to which he replies, "What say you Lordes? why, this was quite
forgot" (_LLL Q1 1.1.141). Shakespeare's surrogate dramatists
seem consistently and quite deliberately guilty of oversights,
errors, and missteps: evidently fallibility was a crucial
characteristic of Shakespeare's mortal and immortal comic
dramaturges.
The omnipotence of dramaturges also seems chimerical:
Oberon is "king of shadowes" (_MSND Q1 3.2.360), and thus the
ultimate theatrical and magical power, but nevertheless, when
Titania dotes on Bottom he admits, "This falles out better, then I
could deuise" (_MSND Q1 3.2.35). Often surrogate dramaturgy
looks like divinity: Lorenzo says that Portia and Nerissa "drop
Manna in the way / of starued people" (_MV Q1 5.1.311-2); Don
Pedro thinks that "if we can do this, Cu-pid is no longer an
Archer, his glory shall bee ours, for we are the onely loue-gods"
(_MAAN Q1 2.1.341-3); Angelo feels that "your grace, like powre
diuine, / Hath look'd vpon my passes" (_MM F1 5.1.401-2); and
Ferdinand declares, "So rare a wondred Father, and a wise /
Makes this place Paradise" (_Temp F1 4.1.135-6). Shakespeare
makes it clear, however, that fortuitous events play a major role
in the dramaturgy of his surrogates: Mistress Page finds "a
double excellency" in Ford's accidental entanglements in her
play (_MWW F1 3.3.155); and Vincentio, stymied by Barnardine's
obstinate refusal to follow the script, is relieved by Ragozine's
death: "Oh, 'tis an accident that heauen prouides" (_MM F1
4.3.76). Even Prospero, perhaps the most Shakespearean of
Shakespeare's surrogates, credits "prouidence diuine" with his
exile (_Temp F1 1.2.186), and Fortune with his current position:
_Pro. Know thus far forth,
By accident most strange, bountifull _Fortune
(Now my deere Lady) hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore: And by my prescience
I finde my _Zenith doth depend vpon
A most auspitious starre, whose influence
If now I court not, but omit; my fortunes
Will euer after droope[.]
(_Temp F1 1.2.207-14)
Prospero's name may itself be a subtle acknowledgement of his
dependence upon providential assistance.[19]
Shakespeare's conception of comic dramaturgy seems to
demand that events fall out better than they can be devised.
Helen Gardner observes that, while a tragic plot must have
inescapable logic, comic plots consist of "changes, chances, and
surprises," and that comedy itself is "an image of life triumphing
over chance" (Gardner 61-2). Shakespeare's play-bound
playwrights seem in fact to depend upon chance to triumph over
life: Friar Francis predicts that "successe / Will fashion the
euent in better shape, / Then I can lay it downe in likelihood"
(_MAAN Q1 4.1.238-40); as Viola declares, "What else may hap,
to time I will commit" (_12N F1 1.2.62), and later makes time
explicitly responsible for the "dnouement": "O time, thou must
vntangle this, not I, / It is too hard a knot for me t'vnty" (_12N
F1 2.1.40-1). Once the multiple deceptions of Page, Mistress
Page, and Fenton have been revealed, Ford explains that a
greater playwright has overruled them all (and he does not refer
to Fenton):
_Ford. Stand not amaz'd, here is no remedie:
In Loue, the heauens themselues do guide the state,
Money buyes Lands, and wiues are sold by fate.
(_MWW F1 5.5.230-2)
Prince Hal has a different meaning in mind, but it would appear
that, so far as Shakespearean comedy is concerned, "nothing
pleaseth but rare accidents" (_1H4 Q1 1.2.180). Shakespeare's
surrogate dramatists, surprised by unforeseen or forgotten
complications and redeemed by fortuitous events, may even
reflect their creator's approach: confident of inspiration and
negligent of minor inconsistencies, prepared to embark without
fully knowing the ultimate destination, perhaps accepting as
inevitable later collaboration, revision, improvisation or
afterthought.
Oberon's dramaturgy, like Prospero's, is dependent upon
magic, and his magic, like Ariel's, is clearly associated with
music, a major element in the art of Shakespeare's surrogate
playwrights: Portia also seems to use song lyrics to direct
Bassanio in his choice of caskets (_MV 3.2.63-5);[20] Vincentio,
although he uses little music for his dramaturgy, explains to
Mariana that "Musick oft hath such a charme / To make bad,
good; and good prouoake to harme" (_MM F1 4.1.14-5); Ariel's
magic is repeatedly equated with music in the dialogue and the
Folio stage directions;[21] and Paulina restores Hermione with
the words, "Musick; awake her: Strike[!]" (_WT F1 5.3.121).
Oberon and Titania's control of the Athenian woods, and
Prospero's mastery of the sea, are echoed in Shakespeare's later
description of Orpheus' magic:
Orpheus with his Lute made Trees,
And the Mountaine tops that freeze,
Bow themselues when he did sing.
To his Musicke, Plants and Flowers
Euer sprung; as Sunne and Showers,
There had made a lasting Spring.
Euery thing that heard him play,
Euen the Billowes of the Sea,
Hung their heads, & then lay by.
In sweet Musicke is such Art,
Killing care, & griefe of heart,
Fall asleepe, or hearing dye.[22]
Oberon's music, like Ariel's, is used to "strike more dead / Then
common sleepe: of all these, fiue the sense" (_MSND Q1 4.1.81-
2). In addition to music's magical effects as a soporific,
however, Duke Orsino points out that "Musicke [is] the food of
Loue" (_12N F1 1.1.1) -- and love is ultimately the aim of the
playwrights' magic in most of these comedies.
There are striking contrasts to the fairy music in _A
Midsummer Night's Dream; in fact, within a single scene
Oberon's incantation (_MSND 4.1.81-3) follows Bottom's request
for "the tongs, and the bones" (_MSND Q1 4.1.29), and is almost
immediately interrupted by the winding of Duke Theseus' hunting
horns (_MSND 4.1.102sd), which introduce a startling definition
of harmony: Theseus advocates "the musicke of my hounds," and
"the musicall confusion / Of hounds and Echo in coniunction"
(_MSND Q1 4.1.106,110-11), while Hippolyta "neuer heard / So
musicall a discord, such sweet thunder" (_MSND Q1
4.1:122-123).[23]
Theseus is not alone among Shakespeare's minor
dramatists; many equate dramaturgic art with the art of hunting.
This is most apparent in _Much Ado about Nothing, as Benedick
and Beatrice are deceived by a theatrical presentation:
O I, stalke on, stalk on, the foule sits.
(_MAAN Q1 2.3.84)
Baite the hooke wel, this fish will bite.
(_MAAN Q1 2.3.98)
Let there be the same nette spread for her[.]
(_MAAN Q1 2.3.191)
If it proue so, then louing goes by haps,
Some Cupid kills with arrowes, some with traps.
(_MAAN Q1 3.1.108-9)
Leontes likewise claims he is "angling" as his initial social
comedy and his jealousy both grow beyond his control (_WT F1
1.2.213). Petruchio's conquest of Kate is virtually a blood sport
on which he is prepared to wager,[24] and Shylock's designs for
a "merrie sport" call for "an equall pound / of [Antonio's] faire
flesh" (_MV Q1 1.3.143,147-8)._ Hunting, the merciless
application of rational art to nature, is Theseus' sport, both in
_A Midsummer Night's Dream and in _The Two Noble Kinsmen,
but it is certainly not Oberon's pastime. Petruchio seems to
follow this hunter's credo, the merciless subjugation of others,
which achieves certain basic goals but leaves the audience
uncomfortable.[25] Imagery of hunting surrounds many of the
practical jokes and gullings: the Parolles-baiters promise to
"make you some sport with the Foxe / ere we case him" (_AWEW
F1 3.6.104-5), Shallow reports, "Ile tell you what the sport shall
be, / Doctor _Cayus and sir _Hu are to fight" (_MWW Q1
2.1.104-105), and Malvolio is transformed to "Sport royall" (_12N
F1 2.3.161). Ford promises to "vnkennell the Fox," Falstaff
(_MWW F1 3.3.142), who significantly ends up with horns on his
head at the oak of Herne the Hunter. The Lord of the
Induction to _The Taming of the Shrew turns from hounds to
beggars as a source of entertainment.
The hunters' approach to comedy is a dark, aggressive,
victimizing one, an art which ultimately leads not to social
reconciliation, but to outcasts and fugitives, who cry out "Ile be
reueng'd on the whole *packe* of you[!]" (_12N F1 5.1.386,
emphasis mine), or "Sorrow on . . . all the *packe* of you / That
triumph thus vpon my misery" (_TS F1 4.3.33-34, emphasis mine).
It is not at all coincidental that at the height of his powers,
Prospero and Ariel literally _hunt down Caliban, Stephano and
Trinculo:
_A noyse of Hunters heard. Enter
diuers Spirits in shape of Dogs and
Hounds, hunting them about: Prospero
and Ariel setting them on.
(_Temp F1 4.1.268sd)
Shakespeare's major benevolent dramatists, Oberon, Portia,
Rosalind, Viola, Paulina, and even Vincentio, take a more
humane approach, and it is this mercy which Prospero learns
from Ariel immediately after the hunting scene:
_Pro. Let them be hunted soundly: At this houre
Lies at my mercy all mine enemies . . .
[_Ar.] . . . your charm so strongly works 'em
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
_Pro. Dost thou thinke so, Spirit?
_Ar. Mine would, Sir, were I humane.
_Pro. And mine shall.
Hast thou (which art but aire) a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not my selfe,
One of their kinde, that rellish all as sharpely,
Passion as they, be kindlier mou'd then thou art?
(_Temp F1 4.1.277-8, 5.1.19-28)
In Shakespearean comedy, aggression which selects victims for
humiliation or abuse can be a temporary source of humour or
merriment, but cannot be the foundation for a successful comic
resolution.[26] The discomfort felt by audiences after the
treatment suffered by Kate, Holofernes, Falstaff, or Malvolio, is
symptomatic of this. The master playwrights in Shakespeare's
comedies avoid such manipulation, or learn to overcome it as
Prospero does. The Globe Theatre and the Bear Garden may
have been close enough neighbours for Wenceslaus Hollar to
confuse them, but for Shakespeare they remained worlds
apart.[27]
In _The Merchant of Venice, the female playwright figure
finally comes into her own. For the first three acts, Portia is
committed to a script written by her deceased father, which
outlines "the lottrie of [her] destenie" and "Barrs [her] the right
of voluntary choosing" (_MV Q1 2.1.5-6). Her father's script
even includes stage directions for her courtship: "Turne you
where your Lady is, / And claime her with a louing kis" (_MV Q1
3.2.140-1). Like Julia and Rosalind, Portia becomes a
dramaturge in her own right only once she enters male disguise,
to follow her husband to Venice. She immediately grasps at a
conventional, stock explanation:
for mine owne part
I haue toward heauen breath'd a secret vowe,
To liue in prayer and contemplation,
Onely attended by _Nerrissa heere,
Vntill her husband and my Lords returne,
There is a Monastry two miles off,
And there we will abide.
(_MV Q1 3.4.26-32)
The "secret vowe," like Vincentio's "sacred Vow" (_MM F1
4.3.149), looks like dramatist's stock-in-trade, as is the
monastery, which is quite probably full, after all, of meddling
friars eager to effect comic dnouements. Russell Fraser
observes that "the Friar, crooked, bumbling, or omnicompetent
as the plot requires, is the last resort of every Renaissance
playwright" (Fraser & Rabkin 10). In Renaissance comedy, it
would seem, the friar was the _first resort: Mucedorus chooses
the disguise of a hermit as the most obvious option after
exhausting the potential of his shepherd's disguise (_Mucedorus
sc 14); Duke Vincentio resorts to this role to effect his designs;
it is as a hermit that Malevole and Celso disguise Pietro in
Marston's _Malcontent; and to return to the play under
discussion, Portia seems to have included a "holy Hermit" in her
tale upon her return to Belmont (_MV Q1 5.1.40).
It would also seem that Portia's script undergoes minor
rewriting from time to time: although she first warns Bassanio,
"ile haue that Doctor for mine bedfellow" (_MV Q1 5.1.246),
within thirty lines, apparently as an afterthought, she changes
the story: "I had it of him: pardon me _Bassanio, / for by this
ring the Doctor lay with me" (_MV Q1 5.1.273-4). Likewise,
Angelo and Escalus report that Duke Vincentio's letters seem
peculiarly contradictory:
_Esc. Euery Letter he hath writ, hath disuouch'd other.
_ An. In most vneuen and distracted manner, his actions
show much like to madnesse, pray heauen his
wisedome bee not tainted[.]
(_MM F1 4.4.1-4)
Vincentio's excuses for leaving Vienna are blatantly contradic-
tory: our difficulty is not that he fails to offer motives, but that
he offers us too many -- we are witnessing dramaturgic
"doodling" (Leggatt, "Substitution" 359). Contradiction thrives in
_The Winter's Tale, too, whether of Shakespearean or Pauline
origin: when Leontes explicitly asks to be brought "To the dead
bodies of my Queene, and Sonne" (_WT F1 3.2.252), it is evident
that a more convincing substitute than Barnardine has been
produced; nonetheless, Shakespeare contradicts himself and his
sources by bringing Hermione back to life two acts later, with
the assistance of Paulina. Shakespeare "doodles" throughout his
plays, as evidenced by the many inconsistencies, ghost
characters, and incomplete revisions, everywhere in the
canon.[28] It may be that his surrogate dramatists simply suffer
as a result of their creator's indeterminacy, but there remains a
possibility that Shakespeare endowed them with dramatic
missteps to reflect the dramatic process as he knew it.
Despite the surrogate playwrights, however, in _The
Merchant of Venice it would seem to be Shakespeare's own plot
mechanism creaking as Portia produces Antonio's three missing
argosies _ex machina (_MV 5.1.273-8), just as the two sonnets
produced conveniently at the end of _Much Ado about Nothing
are the sole means to reconcile Beatrice and Benedick. When
Portia insists "You shall not know by what strange accident / I
chaunced on this letter" (_MV Q1 5.1.294-5), she is merely
emphasizing the contradictory and arbitrary nature of this
development: elsewhere Portia uses the standard comic
dramatist's trick of promising an offstage explanation (_MV
5.1.295-9). No explanation is forthcoming, either, for Portia's
delay in revealing the propitious news to Antonio.
Such postponement, often excessively cruel, it would
seem, is another common technique of Shakespeare's surrogate
dramatists. Portia is one of the worst offenders, not only
keeping Antonio in suspense unnecessarily, but also playing cat
and mouse with Shylock in the trial scene. First, as must
Vincentio and Paulina, Portia must lie to maintain the desired
suspense:
Of a strange nature is the sute you follow,
yet in such rule, that the Venetian law
cannot impugne you as you doe proceed.
(_MV Q1 4.1.177-9)
Of course, Venetian law can indeed impugn Shylock as soon as
he proceeds, and Portia points it out within two hundred lines:
Tarry Iew,
the law hath yet another hold on you.
It is enacted in the lawes of Venice,
if it be proued against an alien,
that by direct, or indirect attempts
he seeke the life of any Cittizen,
the party gainst the which he doth contriue,
shall seaze one halfe his goods, the other halfe
comes to the priuie coffer of the State,
and the offenders life lies in the mercy
of the Duke onely, gainst all other voyce.
(_MV Q1 4.1.354)
Regardless of her moral and religious motivations to argue
mercy before legality, Portia is displaying a common character-
istic among Shakespeare's fictional playwrights. Vincentio's
postponement is perhaps most infamous: he maintains the fiction
of Claudio's death, even going so far as to fire the Provost
(_MM 5.1.461), until he is finally prepared to tell Isabella the
truth, justifying his deception in these well-known lines:
But I will keepe her ignorant of her good,
To make her heauenly comforts of dispaire,
When it is least expected.
(_MM F1 4.3.110-2)
The whole of Paulina's elaborate production seems rather
unnecessary: the very moment in which Leontes hears of his
son's death, he seems entirely repentant:
I haue too much beleeu'd mine owne suspition:
'Beseech you tenderly apply to her
Some remedies for life. _Apollo pardon
My great prophanenesse 'gainst thine Oracle.
Ile reconcile me to _Polixenes,
New woe my Queene, recall the good _Camillo
(Whom I proclaime a man of Truth, of Mercy[.])
(_WT F1 3.2.161-167)
Paulina's postponement, so long that Time must appear as the
play's chorus, seems redundant, unnecessary, even extravagantly
ruthless. Prospero, too, resorts to such cruel postponement
more than once. He rationalizes his harsh treatment of
Ferdinand much as Vincentio explains his own:
But this swift busines
I must vneasie make, least too light winning
Make the prize light.
(_Temp F1 1.2.522-4)
Prospero must resort to deception, too, by alleging to Alonso
that both Ferdinand and Miranda were lost in the tempest
(_Temp 5.1.145-53). It has often been observed that the reasons
for these postponements are sound dramatic reasons, despite
their awkwardness -- but arbitrary postponement seems another
consistent feature of Shakespeare's comic dramatists, and as
such it seems a deliberately chosen technique.
_The Merry Wives of Windsor contains more dramaturges
than any other play, yet because none is dominant the comic
resolution is effected despite them rather than through them. In
_The Tempest, Prospero and Ariel remain in steady control;
despite counter-plots by Caliban and Antonio, the past is clearly
a Prospero's prologue, which he narrates himself in the first
scene. In _The Merry Wives of Windsor, no single dramaturge
can supervise the many contending plots, although Fenton seems
to come closest (_MWW 4.6.16-51). Ten independent playwrights
work in competition, then collaboration and finally competition
once more, throughout the course of the comedy. Falstaff plots
to cuckold Ford and Page in blatantly theatrical terms: he
explains, "we had embrast, kist, protested, & (as it were) spoke
the prologue of our Comedy" (_MWW F1 3.5.64-6). Pistol and
Nym counter-plot to reveal Falstaff's designs and humiliate him,
and Ford disguises himself as Broome and begins an intrigue of
his own. The Host masterminds a "sport in hand," the duel
between Evans and Caius (_MWW F1 2.1.177), much as Sir Toby
and Fabian arrange the confrontation of Cesario and Andrew
Aguecheek. In revenge, the butts of this humour stage the theft
of the Host's horses. Mistress Quickly orchestrates the courtship
of Anne Page by several suitors simultaneously, while she acts
for Mistress Ford and Mistress Page in their repeated humili-
ations of Falstaff.[29] Finally, in a collaborative effort of
monumental proportions, all the dramatists cooperate in the
ultimate mortification of Falstaff at Herne's Oak, where he finds
himself faced with the fairy realm, like Bottom; he recognizes
his metamorphosis immediately, saying, "I do begin to perceiue
that I am made an Asse" (_MWW F1 5.5.119). Despite the larger
collaborative effort, Page, Mistress Page, and Fenton continue to
plot romantic comedies in competition with one another,
centering on the marriage of Anne Page.
Ford, in particular, demonstrates a characteristic of the
fictional playwright not yet mentioned: a distinctive self-
consciousness, or a curiosity about his reputation while in
disguise. Ford is a virtual glutton for punishment as he
repeatedly asks questions of Falstaff:
_ Ford. I am blest in your acquaintance: do you know _Ford
Sir?
_Fal.Hang him (poore Cuckoldly knaue) I know him not: yet I
wrong him to call him poore: They say the iealous
wittolly-knaue hath masses of money, for the which his
wife seemes to me well-fauourd: I will vse her as the key
of the Cuckoldly-rogues Coffer, & ther's my haruest-home.
_Ford. I would you knew _Ford, sir, that you might a-uoid him,
if you saw him.
_Fal. Hang him, mechanicall-salt-butter rogue; I wil stare him
out of his wits: I will awe-him with my cudgell: it shall
hang like a Meteor ore the Cuckolds horns: Master
_Broome, thou shalt know, I will predominate o-uer the
pezant, and thou shalt lye with his wife. Come to me
soone at night: _Ford's a knaue, and I will aggra-uate his
stile: thou (Master _Broome) shalt know him for knaue,
and Cuckold.
(_MWW F1 2.2.250-67)
In the same fashion, Vincentio is overly concerned about his
reputation while disguised as Friar Ludowick, and makes the
mistake of asking Lucio for news of the Duke (_MM 3.2.87).[30]
The result is a torrent of slanderous abuse which Vincentio
cannot arrest, and which he cannot forget, even after forgiving
Angelo entirely.[31] Vincentio's curiosity meets with more
palatable results from Escalus, who wishes to avoid even
harmless gossip:
[_Duke.] I pray you Sir, of what dis-position
was the Duke?
_Esc. One, that aboue all other strifes,
Contended especially to know himselfe.
_Duke. What pleasure was he giuen to?
_Esc. Rather reioycing to see another merry, then
merrie at anie thing which profest to make him
reioice.
A Gentleman of all temperance. But leaue wee him
to his euents, with a praier they may proue
prosperous[.]
(_MM F1 2.2.510-7)
Ford, like Vincentio, does indeed contend to know himself, but is
not entirely pleased with what he hears.
Similar or related self-consciousness is evident in some of
Shakespeare's other fictional playwrights. As Bassanio and
Gratiano swear their concern for Antonio, Portia and Nerissa
make sly asides about their wives (_MV 4.1.288,293), and of
course they later display an inordinate interest in their wives'
rings. Polixenes, while attending the sheep-shearing festival in
disguise, repeatedly asks Florizel about his father, and is
distinctly displeased with the replies he receives (_WT 4.4.392ff).
It would appear that Shakespeare's fictional playwrights don
disguises, and perhaps take on the responsibilities of a
dramatist, at least in part to discover something of themselves,
or of others' perception of themselves.[32] Perhaps it is not too
much to claim that Shakespeare, in similar fashion[33] but with
distinctly different results, found dramatic and poetic art an
avenue for self-exploration.
In _Much Ado about Nothing (1598-9), Don Pedro,
Borachio, and Friar Francis are the primary dramaturgic
characters. Don Pedro plots the disguised wooing of Hero in
collaboration with Claudio, then the deception of Benedick and
Beatrice with still more accomplices, and finally the rejection of
Hero at the altar. Borachio is ultimately responsible for the
deceptive midnight performance, despite Ursula's assertion that
"Don Iohn / is the author of all" (_MAAN Q1 5.2.81), but the
audience never actually sees the scene. Borachio's description
of it, however, like Bardolph's description of the "three
_Germane-diuels; three _Doctor Fau-stasses" (_MWW F1 4.5.67),
is distinctly artificial and literary, apparently influenced by
_Romeo and Juliet rather than Marlowe:
_Bor. Not so neither, but know that I haue to night wooed
Margaret the Lady Heroes gentle-woman, by the name of
Hero, she leanes me out at her mistris chamber window,
bids me *a thousand times good night*: I tell this tale
vildly.
(_MAAN Q1 3.3.131-4, emphasis mine)
Friar Francis, ultimately, is the surrogate playwright of _Much
Ado about Nothing who brings about the comic resolution. Like
Oberon, Vincentio, and Prospero, he is not omniscient -- he is
completely mistaken about Claudio's repentance -- and like Friar
Laurence and Paulina, he suggests a mock-death to promote a
loving marriage.
Beatrice seems to recognize another dramatic clich when
she scoffs at Claudio's assertion, "Talke with a man out at a
window, a proper saying" (_MAAN Q1 4.1.311). Like the
shipwreck and the death-on-sight scenario, the moonlight window
rendezvous seems to have been conventional material ready at
hand to any dramatist: Valentine plans to enter Silvia's window
(_2GV 2.4.181); Egeus asserts that Lysander has "by moone-light,
at her windowe / sung" (_MSND Q1 1.1.33-4); Jessica arranges to
elope with Lorenzo from her window (_MV 2.6); and Diana
arranges to meet Bertram by her chamber window
(_AWEW 4.2.54).[34] To twentieth-century apartment-dwellers,
the image may seem less commonplace, but Beatrice makes it
evident that Claudio's accusation has been contrived by a
second-rate story-teller.[35]
Rosalind is quite clearly the central dramaturge of _As
You Like It, from the moment she decides to "speake to
[Orlando] like a sawcie Lacky, and vn-der that habit play the
knaue with him" (_AYLI F1 3.2.283-4). Like the hackneyed
excuses used by her predecessors (in particular the monastery
and hermit mentioned by Portia), Rosalind explains her distinctly
unpastoral accent by fabricating "an olde religious Vnckle of
mine" (_AYLI F1 3.2.327-8). Like Puck, Oberon's own deputy
dramatist, who declares, "What, a play toward? Ile be an
Auditor, / An Actor to perhappes, If I see cause" (_MSND Q1
3.1.69-70), Rosalind views the "pageant" of Silvius and Phebe,
intending to "proue a busie actor in their play" (_AYLI F1
3.4.50,58). Rosalind, like both Puck and Prospero, speaks the
play's epilogue, which seems appropriate for the internal
dramaturge.[36] In the triumphant scene of Rosalind's perform-
ance, the revelation of her true identity, she presents a masque,
in anticipation of Prospero, and claims magical powers much like
those of Paulina, miraculous but "not damnable":
Beleeue then, if you please,
that I can do strange things: I haue since I was three
yeare old conuerst with a Magitian, most profound in
his Art, and yet not damnable. If you do loue _Rosalinde
so neere the hart, as your gesture cries it out: when your
brother marries _Aliena, shall you marrie her.
(_AYLI F1 5.2.58-63)
The quadruple wedding at the close of _As You Like It is
defiantly artificial, as Jaques makes clear: "There is sure
another flood toward, and these couples are comming to the
Arke" (_AYLI F1 5.4.36-7). Shakespeare also seem deliberately
to eliminate all motivation for Celia's acceptance of Oliver: in
Lodge, a daring rescue demonstrates his worthiness (Gardner 60).
Perhaps it is only because Touchstone is also one of the
"Country copulatiues" (_AYLI F1 5.4.56) that he does not address
his objection about Corin's profession to the comic dramatist:
That is another simple sinne in you, to
bring the Ewes and the Rammes
together, and to offer to get your
liuing, by the copulation of Cattle, to
be bawd to a Bel-weather, and to
betray a shee-Lambe of a tweluemonth
to a crooked-pated olde Cuckoldly
Ramme, out of all reasonable match.
(_AYLI F1 3.2.74-79)
Shakespeare's comedies and romances are replete with such
arbitrary marriages: Leonato arranges an anonymous marriage
for Claudio (_MAAN 5.1.288ff), after which Benedick suggests
that the Prince should "get thee a wife," presumably regardless
of her identity (_MAAN Q1 5.4.122). Sir Toby marries Maria "in
recompence" for the letter she wrote to Malvolio (_12N F1
5.1.373), and in fulfillment of Helena's request, the King of
_All's Well that Ends Well compels Bertram to "Take her by the
hand" (_AWEW F1 2.3.182). Vincentio is responsible for three
arbitrary matches: he couples Angelo and Mariana, Lucio and
Kate Keepdown, and most notably himself and Isabella[37] --
perhaps indeed a betrayal of "a shee-Lambe of a tweluemonth to
a crooked-pated olde Cuckoldly Ramme"?[38] Marina, who can
"freze the god / _Priapus" (_Per Q1 4.6.3-4) is coupled with a
frequenter of brothels, and Leontes pairs Camillo and Paulina
quite abruptly (_WT 5.3.135). As G.K. Hunter observes, it
appears that "the pattern of the dance is what matters" (Hunter
92), and it was perhaps as a result that Shakespeare grew
interested in the pattern-_makers in his comedies.
The independent internal performances of _Love's
Labour's Lost and _A Midsummer Night's Dream gradually
evolved into the more complex interaction of multiple
playwrights in _Much Ado about Nothing, _The Merry Wives of
Windsor, and _Twelfth Night. _Measure for Measure, the
problem play to end all problem plays, demonstrates the
difficulties Shakespeare encountered introducing an ostensibly
omniscient dramaturge into the political sphere. Vincentio was a
deliberate addition on Shakespeare's part -- there is no trace of
him in the sources -- yet it is his character which is largely
responsible for the critical unrest over the play. Without
Oberon's musical and floral charms, Vincentio is faced with
rebellion from characters like Angelo and Barnardine, and as a
merely temporal ruler, his pseudo-divine edicts seem arbitrary
and dictatorial. Vincentio's human motives become questionable,
in a way that Oberon's never can. The comic resolution
Vincentio achieves ultimately seems somewhat hollow, and the
three marriages he commands seem destined for unhappiness:
apparently reciprocal love exists only between Claudio and
Juliet, who managed to pair themselves without the intervention
of a meddling friar (without benefit of clergy at all, in fact). In
the realistic world of _Measure for Measure, true comic
dramaturgy becomes virtually impossible; perhaps this is why
Shakespeare went on to write an uninterrupted stream of six
tragedies instead.
After the incomparably bitter _Timon of Athens (1607-8),
Shakespeare's plays grow steadily less sinister through four
romances, concluding with _The Winter's Tale (1610-11) and _The
Tempest (1611). In the realm of romance, to an even greater
extent than in the early romantic comedies, dramaturgic art
reigns supreme. Shakespeare can conjure tempests and
shipwrecks, span decades or restrict himself to the two hours'
traffic of the stage. Natural laws can be ignored, shipwrecked
vessels can be restored intact, and in _The Winter's Tale, at
least, Shakespeare demonstrated that "Graues at my command /
Haue wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth / By my so
potent Art" (_Temp F1 5.1.53-5). The romances evidently occur
in Oberon's realm of magic and mystery: Pericles must ask
Marina "Haue you a working pulse, and are no Fairie?" (_Per Q1
5.1.140), Belarius thinks Imogen is a fairy, "But that it eates our
victualles" (_Cym F1 3.6.42), the old shepherd finds a "Change-
ling" child and "Faiery Gold" (_WT F1 3.3.119, 123), and
Stephano and Trinculo are convinced Ariel is a fairy (_Temp
4.1.196,212). In this context, as in _A Midsummer Night's
Dream, Shakespeare can successfully present master dramatists,
and they can successfully effect comic resolutions. Paulina and
Camillo perform complementary functions, and Prospero is
undeniably Shakespeare's greatest dramaturgic figure.
Paulina, who dominates the dramaturgy of _The Winter's
Tale almost as completely as she dominates the stage in
performance, has already been adequately discussed. When the
play opens, however, it is not Paulina but Leontes who is
manipulating characters, attempting to produce a comedy of his
own. Leontes tries to coax Hermione much as Lear tries to
draw language from Cordelia: "Tongue-ty'd our Queene? speake
you" (_WT F1 1.2.34).[39] But Leontes' comedy, like Lear's
love-test, quickly escapes his control, primarily because "he hath
euer but / slenderly knowne himselfe" (_KL F1 1.1.311-2), and it
becomes instead an "entertainment / My Bosome likes not, nor
my Browes" (_WT F1 1.2.142-3). Leontes proceeds to stage his
own perverted rendition of _Measure for Measure, in which
Hermione is on trial for a supposed bed-trick and in which he is
cast as Vincentio (while actually playing Angelo): "How blest am
I / In my iust Censure? in my true Opinion?" (_WT F1 2.1.48-9).
In the end, however, he, like Ford, manages only to make a
spectacle of his jealousy, broadcasting his shame before a
summoned audience. Once Leontes begins to collaborate with
Camillo, however, the comic resolution is more certain. Within
a single scene, Camillo formulates Leontes' plan of action
against Polixenes, and counter-plots Polixenes' designs for
escape.
After the conspicuous intervention of Time, it is Polixenes
who attempts to orchestrate events in Bohemia. Like Vincentio,
who "like powre diuine, / Hath look'd vpon [Angelo's] passes,"
Polixenes feels omniscient: "I haue eyes vnder my seruice, /
which looke vpon his remouednesse" (_WT F1 4.2.36-7). Those
"eyes," however, have not observed the events of the first three
acts, and do not realize, as the audience does, Perdita's
ancestry. Polixenes stages the disguise of Camillo and himself,
although they spend considerable time as an audience for
Perdita's "_Whitson-Pastoral" and the ensuing dances (_WT F1
4.4.152). When Polixenes declares his own son "too base / To be
acknowledge" (_WT F1 4.4.460-1), he demonstrates that he has
not yet attained Prospero's final level of wisdom, at which he
can say, even of the basest creature, "this Thing of darkenesse,
I / Acknowledge mine" (_Temp F1 5.1.312-3).
Camillo again intercedes for the sake of the comic action,
directing Florizel and Perdita to Sicilia, arranging for wardrobe,
suitable props, and even a script:
Things knowne betwixt vs three, *Ile write you downe,
The which shall point you forth at euery sitting
What you must say*[.]
(_WT F1 4.4.626-8, emphasis mine)
As before, he also orchestrates a counter-plot for Polixenes,
always working toward the more complete community which
eventually results. Camillo, an accomplished dramatist, requires
no superhuman magic to accomplish his comic purposes because
he knows himself and his characters, and he can direct them on
their own terms. His approach is, if anything, more successful
than Paulina's spectacular one, which inadvertently leads to the
abandonment of Perdita and the loss of her husband Antigonus.
He and Paulina are complementary dramatists, orchestrating
events in alternation until the final discovery scene. Leontes is
acting arbitrarily by coupling the two, but he may be acting for
the best: they are unquestionably a compatible couple.
Shakespeare's independent dramatic career ends,[40] as
Prospero's begins, not with a bang but a Tempest. That tempest
is made possible through both Prospero's and Shakespeare's art,
but also through the collaboration of the audience. The first
scene of Middleton and Dekker's _The Roaring Girle, published
in the same year that _The Tempest was first performed (1611),
describes the scene in an Elizabethan public theatre:
The very floor, as't were, waves to and fro,
And, like a floating island, seems to move
Upon a sea bound in with shores above.[41]
In the first scene of _The Tempest, Shakespeare's audience is
converted into part of Prospero's tempest, the stage in its midst
becomes a frail sea vessel, and the gradually-diminishing clamor
of patrons supplies the roar of the surf. This seems the ultimate
"collective imaginative act of playwright, actors, and audi-
ence."[42]
Prospero's epilogue recognizes this ultimate power of the
audience to create and dispel dramatic illusion:
Now my Charmes are all ore- throwne,
And what strength I haue's mine owne.
Which is most faint: now 'tis true
I must be heere confinde by you,
Or sent to Naples, Let me not
Since I haue my Dukedome got,
And pardon'd the deceiuer, dwell
In this bare Island, by your Spell,
But release me from my bands
With the helpe of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours, my Sailes
Must fill, or else my proiect failes,
Which was to please[.]
(_Temp F1 Epil.1-13)
The audience, as Northrop Frye points out, is the final cause of
any performance (Frye "Argument" 80); Portia says less
technically, "The Crow doth sing as sweetly as the Larke / when
neither is attended" (_MV Q1 5.1.108), and Rosaline makes the
point in _Love's Labour's Lost:
A iestes prosperitie lies in the eare,
Of him that heares it, neuer in the tongue
Of him that makes it[.]
(_LLL Q1 5.2.887-9)
Shakespeare's most successful comic dramatists recognize the
immense value of collaboration, not merely with other dramatists
and actors, but with the audience. The final communal spirit of
comedy must cross the boundary of the playworld and
incorporate the entire theatre audience as well.[43] When the
revels end and the shadows disperse, the audience is the
enduring community formed by the comic action.
Shakespeare's comic dramatists seem to share many
intriguing characteristics. A number are men who withdraw or
seek to withdraw from social responsibilities, or women who
through male disguise are enabled to act in a patriarchal
society. Several demonstrate a curious self-consciousness, either
as a result of their dramaturgic role, or simply their disguise.
Their methods also tend to be similar: even the most omniscient
are guilty of oversights, errors, and contradictions, often
resorting to lame excuses and promises of explanations which
are never forthcoming. Most make use of apparently cruel
postponement for dramatic suspense, and display a propensity to
make use of hackneyed plot devices such as shipwrecks, friars,
death-on-sight scenarios, and balcony scenes. Finally, most
share Oberon's _laissez faire attitude, that with the assistance of
providence or fortune, things will eventually turn out better than
they can devise.
The common characteristics of Shakespeare's fictional
dramatists seem incidental in isolation, but when viewed together
their similarities become striking. Shakespeare may have
deliberately set out to portray flawed and careless playwrights
for a number of reasons. Certainly their imperfections increase
the transparency of Shakespeare's dramaturgy -- verisimilitude
was probably the initial motive for internal performances in the
mid-1590's. The oversights and mistakes of these internal
playwrights may also have been designed to create the
opportunity for Shakespeare to rescue their designs with his own
greater art.
It is more intriguing, however, to speculate that the comic
context demanded responses from Shakespeare's surrogate
dramatists very similar to those it elicited from himself.
Shakespeare's own comic dramaturgy uses musical magic,
conventional motifs and devices, lame and hackneyed excuses,
cruel postponements, arbitrary marriages, and _ex machina
resolutions. Shakespeare's art evidences minor oversights,
inconsistencies, and contradictions. Shakespeare depended upon
the talents of his fellow players to transform written poetry into
oral magic, and despite Hamlet's objections, the ability of Kemp
or Armin to improvise extemporaneously. Shakespeare quite
probably revised on the basis of collaboration and rehearsal, and
his foul papers often seem to have left final decisions up to the
players.[44] Shakespeare's comedy, as Jonson noted, seems
instinctual rather than crafted; in the comedies, at least, we are
inclined to believe Heminges and Condell when they say "His
mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he vttered
with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him a
blot in his papers" ("To the great Variety of Readers" F1 28-30).
It hardly seems humanly possible that Shakespeare deliberately
contrived the myriad complexities of his plays, and found time
to write them as well. Inspiration and genius are not "continuall
plodd[ing]" but carefree creation, which ultimately stands back
and recognizes that "This falles out better, then I could deuise."
Russell Fraser's observations about rhetorical ornament
also help to explain the concentration of dramaturgic figures in
Shakespearean comedy:
...when language is highly stylized,
virtuosity is everywhere to the fore.
The playwright is pulling the strings
and desires our witnessing and
applause. When on the other hand he
is seeking to rouse our emotions, he
takes pains to conceal himself and his
expertise. In tragic drama, he is
invisible like the god of creation. In
comic drama, he is all brazenly the
"god from the machine." Plot is
conspicuous and turns on contrivance,
characters are submerged in their
extravagant function, attention to
rhetoric is overt.
(Fraser & Rabkin 12)
Internal playwrights are much less frequent in Shakespeare's
tragedies and histories, although figures of political authority
are everywhere.[45] This is partly, as Fraser suggests, because
the dramatist seeks to avoid drawing attention to his illusion. It
is also true, however, that political authority alone seems
adequate to direct events toward a tragic or historical
conclusion: in the real world, men do this every day. John of
Gaunt points out the limitations of mere mortal authority to King
Richard:
Shorten my daies thou canst with sullen sorrowe,
And plucke nights from me, but not lend a morrow:
Thou canst helpe time to furrow me with age,
But stoppe no wrinckle in his pilgrimage:
Thy word is currant with him for my death,
But dead, thy kingdome cannot buy my breath.
(_R2 Q1 1.3:227-232)
Royal authority cannot command a loving betrothal or a
childbirth: the closest which a King or Duke can manage seems
to be Bertram's "I take her hand" or Lucio's "pressing to death, /
Whipping and hanging" (_MM F1 5.1.569-70). The comic
dramatist, however, creates loving matches and renewed
communities as a matter of course. He may perform his duties
awkwardly or conventionally, _magically or mechanically, with
the assistance of providence or fortune, accident or luck, but
ultimately his powers exceed those of mere royalty, and partake
of the divine:
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of Princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme[.]
(Sonnet 55:1-2)
________________________________
E N D N O T E S
[1] Like James Calderwood, I may occasionally seem guilty of
an "intentional-biographical fallacy," but my methods and
aims are strictly limited to the interpretation of the plays.
It is simply more expedient (and comprehensible) to say
"Shakespeare intended . . . " than "The evidence of
Shakespeare's plays consistently seems to demonstrate a
deliberate . . . " (but even this does not avoid the
"intentional fallacy"). In the end, I must confess with
Calderwood that "it is pleasant to think of Shakespeare as
having at least temporarily occupied live skin before
being permanently bound in calf" (Calderwood 6). It is
also necessary to be aware that, as Ralph Berry observes,
"audience" is often rhetoric for "self" (Berry, "Homan"
241). Being aware, and being immune, are of course
vastly different things.
[2] The chronology used in formulating the arguments in this
paper is that of G. Blakemore Evans in _The Riverside
Shakespeare, pp 47-56. Direct quotations from
Shakespeare's dramatic works are taken from the Hinman
facsimile of the First Folio and the Allen & Muir facsimile
of the Quartos, identified by conventional act and scene
divisions, and the lineation of the original texts. Indirect
references will be to the lineation of the Riverside
edition, and will not include the notation "Q1" or "F1."
[3] This artificial exuberance helps explain the many
twentieth-century productions of the play which amplify
the text with the techniques of _commedia del'arte,
trapeze artistry, and even juggling.
[4] In _WT the shipwreck appears in conjunction with a bear
_ex machinus, another hackneyed plot device which is
"Like an old Tale still" (_WT F1 5.2.60). Fabian's
extravagant tales of Aguecheek's prowess leave Cesario
stricken "as if a Beare were at his heeles" (_12N F1
3.4.283), and of course Theseus selects the animal as the
most atrocious for his image, "How easie is a bush
suppos'd a Beare?" (_MSND Q1 5.1.20). The ravenous
bear also seems rather artificial in _Mucedorus.
[5] _CE has fewer theatrical words than any of Shakespeare's
comedies, and fewer than one-third the average in the
romances. The theatrical words the play does contain are
essentially neutral in context, like "part" or "play,"
although occurrences of "Tragicke" (_CE F1 1.1.63) and
"play the Porter well" (_CE F1 2.2.211) are slightly more
significant.
[6] Partially or entirely depending, of course, upon the
textual authority of the quarto, _The Taming of A Shrew,
regarded for many years as either a "source" or a "bad
quarto." I prefer the closure offered by _A Shrew, but
recognize that Shakespeare may have preferred to resist
closure (no doubt his "negative capability" exceeded my
own). It may be that he saved the material from _A
Shrew's concluding lines for Bottom in _MSND:
Slie: Whose this? _Tapster, oh Lord sirra, I have had
The bravest dreame to night, that ever thou
Hardest in all thy life.
. . .
Tapster: Nay tarry _Slie for Ile go home with thee,
And heare the rest that thou hast dreamt to night.
(_A Shrew 19.10-12, 21-2 -- Bullough 1:108)
[7] Sidney Homan, _When Theatre Turns to Itself, p 69.
[8] The masque also appears outside the comic genre in
_Romeo and Juliet (1595-6) (which of course has many
other affinities with comedy), _Timon of Athens (1607-8),
and _Henry VIII (1612-3).
[9] Consider, as token extra-generic examples, Joan de
Pucelle (Joan of Arc) (_1H6), Richard III, Aaron, Titus
Andronicus, Friar Laurence (_RJ), Claudius, Iago, and
Edmund (_KL) -- and the scope could be widened, as
James Calderwood suggests, to include "all the kings" (16),
and ultimately any character who gives instruction,
orders, or direction to another.
Lengthy passages of narration also conjure up scenes
and action before the eyes of the audience, and in this
sense become dramaturgic: examples include the speeches
of Grumio (_TS 4.1.72-84), Oliver (_AYLI 4.3.98-156), and
Prospero (_Temp 1.2.53-184). I have not thought it
advisable to attempt a synthesis of all these aspects of
internal direction, however, and in my defense I cite
Edward Hubler's remarks:
It is not surprising, then, that even the most
informed studies of comedy restrict their subject
matter; they whittle it down to size, which is to say
to the size of the whittler.
(Hubler 58)
[10] The references occur at _CE F1 1.2.99, 4.3.11, and
4.3.64. It is intriguing that Shakespeare's only other uses
of the word occur three times in _1 Henry VI and three
times in _The Tempest. This suggests an even stronger
link with the later romance.
[11] Solinus uses the word as he observes,
These are the parents to these children,
Which accidentally are met together.
(_CE F1 5.1.359-360)
[12] An "Angel" portraying Vincentio seems an intriguing
premonition of _Measure for Measure. There are only
two Vincentios in all of Shakespeare's works, although
there are several Angelos (_CE's goldsmith, _MM's
deputy, and _Othello's "signior" - at Q1 1.3.20).
Unfortunately, _MM's Vincentio is named only in the F1
cast list, considerably weakening any argument about the
significance of his name.
[13] I am indebted to Ann Pasternak Slater's compelling study,
_Shakespeare the Director, for my understanding of
Shakespeare's implicit stage directions.
[14] Frye also seems to be ignoring the conventions of
tragicomedy: he neglects the wounded and presumed dead
heroine, Dorothea, in 4.4 of Greene's _The Scottish
History of James IV (1590), and the attempted murder of
Bellario / Euphrasia in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Philaster
(1609).
[15] Compare the desire of Philaster, in the depths of his
despair, to find a land without women (_Philaster 3.2).
[16] Studiousness seems to be one of the characteristics of
friars for Shakespeare: consider Friar Laurence, who has
a study adjoining his cell (_RJ 3.3.76) and is remarkably
knowledgeable in plant lore. Shakespeare nonetheless
made friars the central dramaturges of _RJ, _MAAN, and
_MM -- perhaps because of their independence from the
other characters, their mysterious, almost magical
providential connections, and of course their ability to
marry couples -- an essential characteristic for any comic
playwright.
[17] Sonnet 66, lines 9-11. Quotations from Shakespearean
poetry are taken from the editions in G. Blakemore Evans'
_Riverside Shakespeare, because a convenient facsimile of
early editions was not available.
[18] The best explanation I have encountered for the
Barnardine / Ragozine complication, except perhaps the
one proposed here, is that Shakespeare creates a situation
in which Vincentio can spare Barnardine in order to
restore our sympathy to the Duke before he proceeds to
lie to Isabella (Gelb 29). Of course, the two explanations
are not mutually exclusive: Shakespeare may well kill two
theatrical birds with one Ragozine. As Philip Edwards
makes clear,
If Shakespeare had suddenly found himself getting
too fond of the reprobate to kill him off, he could
easily have scratched him out of the play and gone
on with Ragozine. But no, he _wanted him in, as a
character who refuses to obey _his, the dramatist's
behests, and as the condemned prisoner who
refuses to play a part in the Duke's scheme for
outwitting Angelo.
(Edwards [14])
[19] The etymology of Prospero's name is in dispute, of course.
It would be interesting to verify Robert Egan's claim that
"_prospero is the Italian for _faustus" (Egan 97). It seems
self-evident that the name would suggest prosperity to an
English audience. Shakespeare's usage of "prosper" may
suggest a providential association in his mind: for
example, "Heauen prosper the right" (_MWW F1 3.1.23);
"Heauen prosper our sport" (_MWW F1 5.2.12); "the Lord
blesse you, God prosper your af-faires" (_2H4 Q1 3.2.259);
"Kind Gods forgiue me that, and prosper him" (_KL Q1
3.7.94); "Oh! you haue, I know, petition'd all the Gods for
my prosperitie" (_Cor. F1 2.1.172-173); "his euents, with a
praier they may proue prosperous" (_MM F1 3.1.517); and
"To the protection of the prosperous Gods" (_Timon F1
5.1.227). Of course, Shakespeare makes use of the word
in 83 other contexts.
[20] The 1989 Stratford Festival production, following what I
suspect is a well-established critical tradition, laid enough
emphasis upon the rhyme words of the song (bred, head,
and nourish
d) that they drew laughter from the audience.
If the audience understood the hint, no doubt Bassanio
would too.
[21] The most obvious references include _Temp F1
1.2.448,452, 2.1:187, 2.1:323, 3.3:19,22,93, and 4.1.65. It
is also intriguing to notice the parallels between the
performances staged by Ariel and the folkloric magic
performed by Sacrapant in George Peel's _The Old Wives
Tale (1590?). Sacrapant summons several Furies to carry
off the brothers over a feast (p 60-1) and to carry off
Huanebango (p 69). Jack, while invisible, pinches
Eumenides (p 79), much as Ariel baits Caliban by imitating
Trinculo's voice. (References to _OWT are to Patricia
Binney's Revels edition).
[22] The song is sung by the Queen's attendant in _Henry VIII
(or _All is True, if one follows Oxford's argument) at F1
3.1.4-15. Although Shakespeare probably worked with a
collaborator on this play (requiring the authorship of these
lines to be demonstrated), Shakespeare uses the same
images to describe Orpheus' magic at _2GV 3.2.77-80 and
_MV 5.1.70-88.
[23] Critics argue that Theseus and Hippolyta present us with
an "image of harmonious control over brute impulse"
(Hunter 100), and I agree that to some extent this is true.
The conjunction of these three attitudes to music within a
single scene could not have been accidental, however.
[24] I think this example is in some way indebted to the
wording of Alexander Leggatt's comments on _TS in
_Shakespeare's Comedy of Love, page 56.
[25] Petruchio's domination of Kate is only perceived as
acceptable by modern audiences if she is considered a
willing collaborator in the final scene.
[26] Consider Launcelot Gobbo's determination to "try
confusions" with his "more then sand blinde, high grauell
blinde" old father (_MV 2.2.29,28). Despite the mock
recognition scene which follows, the humour here, as
throughout the play, is indeed dark.
[27] This is not to say that the audience's lust for blood does
not influence Shakespeare in _Titus Andronicus or _Julius
Caesar, but my focus here is comedy.
[28] Unfortunately this effect is not especially limited to the
comedies and romances -- but as Richard Fly observes,
"Shakespeare has a way . . . of partially validating and
then more-than-partially discrediting most all methodol-
ogies that presume to contain him" (Fly 137).
[29] And it is intriguing to note the reappearance of the
death-on-sight motif, as Mistress Ford tells Falstaff, "If you
goe out in your owne semblance, / you die Sir {Iohn},
vnlesse you go out disguis'd" (_MWW F1 4.2.57-8).
[30] Anne Barton memorably suggests that "Lucio is like an
unruly extempore actor crept without permission into the
Duke's tidy morality drama" (Righter 179).
[31] Vincentio claims that Lucio's "slanders I forgiue" (_MM F1
5.1.566), but five lines later asserts indignantly,
"Slandering a Prince deserues it" (_MM F1 5.1.571).
Likewise, Prospero's pardon of Antonio seems undermined
by his emotions:
For you (most wicked Sir) whom to call brother
Would euen infect my mouth, I do forgiue
Thy rankest fault; all of them: and require
My Dukedome of thee, which, perforce I know
Thou must restore.
(_Temp F1 5.1.142-146)
[32] Of course, it does appear that any character in disguise
can display similar interest. While Benedick, who does
not seem to be a dramatist in any significant way, is
masked, he pretends he does not know Benedick, and
makes the mistake of asking Beatrice "Whats he?" (_MAAN
Q1 2.1.117). He is profoundly disturbed by the response
he receives -- and the audience, at least, learns something
about his affection for Beatrice even at this early stage
of the comedy. Mucedorus, however, seems at least
partially in theatrical control of his situation, as he is
disguised as a hermit and asks Mouse for a description of
himself as shepherd: "What manner of man was he?"
(Fraser & Rabkin, sc.14 l.50).
[33] The argument is strengthened if Shakespeare did indeed
act in his own plays, thus becoming another dramatist in
disguise.
[34] The stock device is not limited to the comedies: Romeo
and Juliet meet almost nowhere else (eg _RJ 2.2); and
Ophelia sings of St. Valentine's Day in her madness: "And
I a mayde at your window / To be your Valentine" (_Ham
Q2 4.5.46-7).
[35] Ironically, it is Benedick whom Beatrice accuses of
"deuising impossible slaunders" (_MAAN Q1 2.1.123), and
Hero whom she overhears planning to "deuise some honest
slaunders" against her (_MAAN Q1 3.1.86).
[36] The essence of Rosalind's plot also appears some fifteen
years earlier in John Lyly's _Gallathea (1583-5), in which
Phyllida says to Gallathea, "let me call thee mistress"
(_Gall. 4.4.20) while both are in male disguise. And
although Rosalind claims that "It is not the fashion to see
the Ladie the Epi-logue" (_AYLI F1 Epi.1), Gallathea does
indeed speak the Epilogue to her play. (References to
_Gallathea are to the edition by Norman Rabkin in Fraser
& Rabkin).
[37] R.W. Chambers points out that Shakespeare corrects the
error of _Promos and Cassandra by refusing to marry
Isabella to Angelo (Chambers 104), but fails to notice that
Shakespeare then goes on, just as arbitrarily, to marry
Isabella to Vincentio.
[38] Daniell slyly remarks that Vincentio's "'What's mine is
yours, and what is yours is mine' reads to modern ears
more like sexual harassment" (Daniell 117). Gelb wonders
how a marriage can be both reward for Mariana and
punishment for Angelo, and foresees marital difficulties.
[39] Leontes and Lear have more in common than alliterating
names. Both plays are pre-Christian, both focus on issues
of blindness, aging, and time, and through both the word
"nothing" echoes like thunder. Both discard a daughter,
only to be reunited in a final scene which inverts its
sources: in _KL, this means that Cordelia dies, but in _WT
it means that Hermione miraculously survives. Lear
hovers over Cordelia's body in the final scene,
desperately catching at any sign of life, just as Leontes is
spellbound by the lips of the supposed statue of Hermione.
[40] Critical agreement places only the collaborative plays
_Henry VIII (1612-3), _Cardenio (1612-3, no longer extant),
and _The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613) after _The Tempest
(1611).
[41] _The Roaring Girle 1.1. Harbage 114, quoting Adams,
_Shakespearean Playhouses, p. 279.
[42] The July 1989 production of _The Tempest by Toronto's
Skylight Theatre suggested this observation. Even without
a crush of groundlings standing in the yard, the crowd
filling the amphitheatre at Earl Bales Park seemed to
increase the confusion and activity in the play's opening
scene. The phrase is Richard Fly's (Fly 134).
[43] Perhaps it is indicative of Vincentio's problematic status
that he professes to hold a very different view of the
audience:
I loue the people,
But doe not like to stage me to their eyes:
Though it doe well, I doe not rellish well
Their lowd applause, and Aues vehement:
Nor doe I thinke the man of safe discretion
That do's affect it.
(_MM F1 1.1.72-77)
[44] In particular, one senses that the two speeches by Romeo
and Friar Laurence when end _RJ 2.2 and begin 2.3 are
options, choric utterances which can be spoken by either
performer. Certainly Shakespeare's plays have been
interpreted in remarkably diverse ways throughout their
stage histories, although that would seem only partially
attributable to Shakespearean ambiguity.
[45] _Hamlet is a notable exception, for metatheatricality is at
the fore, and dramaturges include Claudius, Hamlet, and
the ghost.
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